I ask this question because I never used analytics and worked with my eyes wide shut. That’s till I discovered that you need to keep your eyes wide open if you want your blog to be popular. Now what do I mean by this?
Obviously it is not a physical thing – I mean eyes open and shut. It is about knowing what’s happening to your blog – to your website. Welcome to the world of analytics.
What is analytics?
I have a website from which I sell medifast coupons and nutrisystem discounts. Earlier I used to count beans till my site fetched customers. I mean there was nothing much I could do other than SEO the content and wait. But analytics changed all that. With a small bit of code, I could now know what’s going on in and around my website. I knew the number of visitors to my site, where they came from and how they exited. I was surprised to know that most went away from the main page without even looking at my other stuff. This got me thinking about my user interface and how to make it stickier. This is the power of analytics.
Google analytics is the best and free
There are many analytic tools doing the rounds, but Google Analytics is the best out there. You only have to insert a small bit of code in your web pages and you are ready to open your eyes. With Google Analytics I entered a new world of intelligence. There were hundreds of parameters I could study and analyze. I could dig deeper and deeper into the stats. I could even get the IP address of the guys who accessed my site from Nevada. This was an eye opener for sure.
Google analytics for WordPress
There is a plug-in for WordPress users which enables Google Analytics. This is a powerful tool which can transform the shape of your blog. Of course you have to tweak and twist and turn your look and feel – I mean your blog. The information which you glean from the analytics is huge and impressive. Just a word of caution – Google analytics can be addictive – I mean you can spend hours and days looking at the data churned out. Don’t get addicted .Use the data to make changes on your blog or website. The whole idea is to tweak a bit and look at the results and then tweak a little more , till you get it right.
SEO must be an outcome of your analytics
The beauty of analytics is that you are always on a magical journey of discovery. You come to know hidden truths and also hidden lies about SEO.I believe that a couple of hidden lies can hurt awfully more than a bunch of truth about SEO. You will find many great and much talked about SEO techniques don’t really work in practice. But then I leave it to you. Probably you will discover stuff which is unique to you. But eventually, with web analytics, you will know where you stand and what you should be doing to set things right. This is what I mean by saying not to work with your eyes wide shut.
What do you think, are you using Google Analytics on your blog?
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If you don’t want to use Google Analytics, you can always use statcounter (which is free). One interesting aspect of statcounter is that it shows clickouts too.
Yes Google analytics is the best tool to get anatomy of your site traffic but for traffic user interface and contents play vital role.
It’s an iterative process. You look at traffic – analyze – change user interface – look at the traffic – analyze – change user interface. Ultimately, the visitor looks at your website ,not your analysis. I agree that interface and content play a huge role in the scheme of things.
Have a good day.
Shrini
Hi, Shirini!
Analytics really help alot, well if you’ve an eCommerce site you can use live chat tools really I love them they do provide live visitors movement and its really feel good to see where visitors are coming from and how are they moving.
by the way thanks for the article.
Information is so key to getting where you want to go. Of course there are tools like google trends! But most of all, Analytics helps one figure out ‘where google is coming from’. the more information we have, helps get an overall picture or feeling of what is happening with google. Lets face it they are the biggest 🙂
Very well written Shrini …
Google analytics is truly a great tool to monitor website statistics..without this tool I can’t even think of running a blog
actually i use Google analytics! and it helps me find any information i need. I don’t know but I can’t imagine a website without Analytics service ^,^ Great post Shrini..
Hello Shrini. I suspect that analytics don’t show all traffic coming into your blog. Can you give comment on this?
To the best of my knowledge , Google Analytics provides all information about traffic. You can actually drill down to the IP address of visitors. You can set up something called the funnel and distill your stats. And it is free ….. enjoy.
Shrini
I would not have a single successful blog without analytics, not one. It tells me which post people spend longest reading (so I know what people want to read about) and where they click. I can use my more popular posts to drive traffic to the less popular one, check the bounce points.
You can go as deep or as light as you want with it but it is essential!
Analytics are a great way to track your blog’s progress and how much traffic you are making on it. Actually, I do use Google Analytics although I am also using StatCounter as well.
Hi Shrini…I also believe that we have to know what is happening to our blogs and websites for them to be popular…
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so, Excellent post!
Hi Shrini!
I am using GA and recommend this to everyone too, because it is a complete stat that we can use for traffic tracking.
But since Google panda, some people think about removing GA from their websites because they are afraid Google use it as they change their algorithm..
Not sure if it’s true though, but I am still using GA 🙂
Hello, Shrini.
You said it. I have heard and am convinced that Google Analytics is indeed the best tracking system out there that is free and quite helpful for newbie or seasoned bloggers alike. But, alas! the one in my blog is not working yet. 🙁 Something must have gone wrong when the tracking code was embedded in the code of our site. I am still waiting for my boss to get on fixing it though as he is the one who takes care of everything technical in our blog. So, right now I am using CuteRank and checking BlogGrader and Chrome SEO Plus from time to time.
Thanks for sharing this, Shrini. Made me send a gentle reminder to my boss about our Google Analytics. Keeping my fingers crossed now.
Regards!
Kim
Analytics is very useful in finding the keywords that bring traffic to your site and conversions.
i am new to all this and pretty new to analytics so this blog has been helpful and i will be bookmarking it and studying it with a fine toothcomb. learn learn learn is what my mom always used to say
Analytic really helps us alot. i am 100% agree with you that Google analytic is the best i am also using this
Of course IF we do not track our website performance, there is no use of doing hard works in blogging. It feels so good to see visitors activities in blog so Google analytics is the best one.
What I love about digging deep into the analytics data is that you’re always learning new stuff about your website(s).
On the other hand, numbers have to be constantly monitored for changes, you have to properly group numbers under cause-effect, correlate traffic data with search engine rankings, and the entire process may seem boring. But the advantages of knowing the ins and outs of your web stats are more than worth the time and patience needed to make use of analytics data.
That’s the good thing about wordpress…analytics…knowing who, what, when and what to do with your site…and yes you are right about it being so addictive…
Yah, you do need to regularly check your stats just to get confidence on yourself, the more increase you see in traffic the more you will love blogging
you are perfectly right!!!google analytic is truly addicting..I spend my whole day peeping!..ha ha…it’s true!
I love google analytics! It is one of my favorite free tools I use daily.
You can be spending countless hours on traffic techniques that dont work if you are not tracking
Joshua the ZamuraiBlogger
I agree. Having analytics is a must. That said, I would say, don’t go and spend a bunch of money on other “premium” statistics plugins — they will drain too much of your time. It is a fine balance between mining for data and getting so lost that you don’t get anything else done!
I love Google Analytics. I don’t even want to think about having to miss Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.
And the “new” version of Google Analytics is even better. First I didn’t like it, but now I’m used to it I can get so much more out of it.
I always look at the clock to see if it is almost 15.00 here, because that is when my information gets updated.
I do admit, I’m a little bit addicted. It’s almost like a game, checking how many people used an Ipad to come to your site, stuff like that 😛
Analytics is not only addictive but also a life saver for your website. I am now going through a WordPress phase ( I am trying to get addicted to it) and I find that Google Ananlytics can be very easily incorporated into any WordPress theme. This is great for guys who are more into business than into technology. I would recommend WordPress with Google Analytics to everyone.
Disclaimer – I don’t earn anything from this recommendation. I am not an affiliate of Google or WordPress and I don’t sell their products.
Analytics are a great way to track your blog’s progress and how much traffic you are making on it. Actually, I do use Google Analytics although I am also using StatCounter
In my opinion Google Analytics is the best out there and it’s free. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Actually it’s great.
Love
Inmediately i learn to use google analytics my income increase 500%. Integrating analitycs with adsense data is the best thing an blogger could have. Actualy i have a domain arquigrafico and a subdomain en.arquigrafico, but i can not received analitycs and adsense data in the subdomain. Can anyone please tell me a good place were to make this correctly. Also i m receivin no adsense data in my analytics , althoug i hace both account linked.
You must select the correct option in Google Analytics settings page to include your sub-domain. This should work.
Regarding AdSense data I have to check. But offhand I can say that this should be doable.
Srini
I used to be a huge fan of Analytics…
More recently I have started to question how useful it is for some websites.
There are a couple of reasons for my point of view.
1) Quality of captured data
With people being able to opt out of Google Analytics, it means you are seeing an incomplete dataset. On some of the websites I deal with this can account for as much as 80% of website visitors.
Normally hosting comes with AWStats. Although its not as comprehensive as Analytics, if your interested in Keyphrases and accurate figures, it can be used.
2) Page size bloat
The code as supplied by Google does impact web page size and load times. Google have said they take load times into consideration when deciding SERPs. So if because of GA your pages are taking longer to load then your competition you may be actually putting yourself at a disadvantage.
I’m not saying going away from GA is right for everyone, but you should be thinking if GA is always the right solution and if by getting the data in a different way you will reach your goals easier..